NRB Interview: Andrew McCarthy and the Grand Jihad, Part 1

Elise Cooper is a freelance author focusing on the conservative point of view on issues involving national and homeland security. Her articles have been published by various conservative blogs, magazines and Republican newsletters.

Andrew C. McCarthy led the prosecution team in the 1995 terrorism trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheik.) He was able to get the sheik and eleven others convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After the September 11 attacks he supervised the U.S. Attorney’s Anti-Terrorism Command Post in New York City. From 1999 until his resignation in 2003, he worked as a Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Justice Department in New York. NewsRealBloginterviewed him about his books and terrorism.

NewsRealBlog: You have written two books. What point did you make in your first book, Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad?

Andrew C. McCarthy: It was about how inept the national security problem is being conducted. National security is being treated as a court case not as a security problem. This book was about terrorism.

NRB: Why did you write your most recent book, The Grand Jihad?

McCarthy: I wanted to wake Americans up to understand the threat is not just about terrorism but a broader challenge to Western Civilization. I am not making a judgment but am just reporting what they say. I felt it was necessary to write about the violent Jihad.

NRB: In the book you address it as a serious problem. Why?

McCarthy: The movement is not a fringe problem. The Muslim Brotherhood sees themselves as the true representative of true Islam. It sees itself as the mainstream of Islamic thought.

NRB: What did you mean by the sub-title of your latest book, How Islam and the Left Sabotage America?

McCarthy: A 1991 Muslim Brotherhood internal memorandum describes their mission of Grand Jihad as to destroying America from within by sabotage.

NRB: Do explain this threat in your book?

McCarthy: In chapter two I talk about the ideology that says Sharia Law is indivisible. Islamic ideology does not recognize divisions between the spiritual and the secular. It’s not a faith like we understand faith in the West. It’s a full purpose, comprehensive, economic system with its own legal code. The basic premise is that they are duty bound to spread Islam and destroy the West.